office stuff...

A few days ago, I had to confess to my team that I'd found my name listed in the infamous Civil Service Final List Lucky Draw. And that meant I'd be leaving soon for greener(?) pastures. They looked at me with shock, disgust and communicated a thick sense of betrayal for about a full minute. And then all hell broke loose. I was chided for not sharing the 'good news' earlier, asked to concoct a 60X40 site out of thin air, offered the assistance of a 'PA' and got two marriage offers all in the next half hour. Things have now pretty much settled down. I still haven't told my lunch-mates about the 'IT'. I hate the attention. And the frequent requests for treats. I am miserly to the core and don't spend pretty much on anything, and certainly not on others. And since I've blown my entire first month salary on the Sony Handycam DCR-SR68 and owe the major part of my second month salary to my current roommate, ex-roommate, swimming instructor, canteen guy, father, old classmate, new colleague and a just a few more people, the 't' word just makes me mad as a... as a... you know, something really, really mad.

I took to writing this between coding in VBA for a Japanese scorecard. My brain freezes at the sight of all those lines of code every 57minutes and I need some distraction. My team, which provides enough of that, has left for the day and I'm left with just a bag of banana chips which smell of hair oil, a bottle of water and a luke warm, biodegradable, disposable cup of repeatedly boiled over tea. Oh, and a recent discovery of around 200 movies which I'm greedily topping my laptop with. Not a bad place to be stuck in actually.... ;-)

office meetings...

Another meeting scheduled. Just about the hardest thing to do on a sweltering noon, right after lunch. Matters didn’t improve as thirty of us packed into a meeting room designed for ten. And ten more joined on the phone at regular intervals through the length of the meeting.

The chairperson had recently attended a global meet and this meeting was aimed at propagating the propaganda to the grassroots. I am one of the roots here. I try to keep awake by taking notes. Some were not exactly what my superiors had in mind, but general tips on getting through meetings successfully. Only those who are endowed with the strongest disposition will come out unscathed out of the million meetings that you are forced into during a lifetime. For those who are less fortunate there’s always a few tips the likes of me are willing to share. For eg: There’ll always be some speakers you’ll learn to tune out and some you’ll learn to automatically tune in. The latter are a rare species, may even be extinct, so you can forget them. The former are an important one too, actually more important, coz without them, you’d have nothing but a bunch of silently meditative people sitting around tables,  trying hard to avoid each others gaze, scribbling furiously away in their office stationery.

The agenda of the meeting is immaterial. Or ‘Confidential’. That’d certainly look better if my manager ever traces this piece of writing back to me before I have a backup offer. Anyway, after 70 minutes we were done. I had my pen which I’d lent to the Attendance Attendant in my peripheral vision the whole while. I have an extreme fear of losing things. Pens lent to people, chappals outside temples.  In agreement with Freud, I have traced it to my childhood incidents of lost pencils and rubbers when my dear Ma scalded me with red-hot iron. Okay, that’s a little carried away. But I have it on good authority that she looked daggers at me as she blew away at the hearth in the kitchen many a day.

The best part of any meeting is the end. When you are released into relative freedom. This one was especially good coz our chairperson magically whipped out a huge bag of chocolates and passed them around. The aftertaste of caramel still lingers in my mouth as I end this and there’s another saved for the next break or maybe a meeting.